Playing Work Approved Hooky

walking through the pine tree forest

On Thursday Marc and I both took a half day off of work so that we could head down to Sea World San Diego. Our goal was to finally see the new One Ocean Shamu show but were also happy to take in some of the Christmas decorations. Marc originally took me to Sea World the day after we were engaged in celebration of my birthday. The weather was definitely different this time around but it was just as much fun as our first visit!

   

Turtle Reef

Our first stop was checking out the new Turtle Reef. After entering the darkened building we were met with huge aquarium style tanks of swimming turtles. Some of Sea World's bigger turtles are found in other parts of the park, but I thought that these guys were pretty impressive on their own. It was fun to watch them swim by and quite a few of the turtles had little fish that were following right along with them. There were also a few here and there that were resting on the floor of the tank or among the tank decorations.


After the Turtle Reef we wandered through the Shark Encounter. Part of the shark encounter exhibit is looking down into the tank watching the sharks swimming around from above the water. For the rest of the encounter you head down underneath the water and into a plastic tube that goes through the shark tank. It is still amazing to watch these guys swim right over you. The benefit of going during the week is that we were able to walk back and forth on the moving sidewalk to get our shots without worrying about getting in other people's way.

At this point it was just about time for the Shamu show, so we headed over to Shamu arena with just about everyone else who was at the park that day. Thankfully it wasn't too crowded, we were able to get a good seat and enjoyed the show.

After the show we wanted to check on the baby beluga whale but sadly when we arrived at her tank, she was in the back with the other female belugas. Apparently a family had a purchased an encounter and were currently in the water with the male belugas and Sea World trainers. Since she is still a baby they are in the process of getting her accustomed to interactions with people and therefore limit her exposure when there are people in the water other then her trainers.